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Liz

Drury O'Neill

Postdoctoral researcher

Staff profile

Liz Drury O’Neill is a postdoctoral researcher focusing on coastal livelihoods, fisheries and marine resource governance in the Swahili coast

Profile summary

Small-scale fisheries

Value chains

Seafood trade

Survey design & execution

Market analysis

Behavioural economic experiments

Participatory methods

Drury O’Neill is beginning her postdoctoral research on two newly funded projects which start mid-2019.

Part of her research looks into fishery governance interventions, specifically periodic seascape closures, and what they mean long term for coastal populations in coping with shocks or pressures. Through combining participatory methodologies and agent-based modelling, this project asks questions, such as: How do the adopted community-based closures change the relationship between people and the marine ecosystem?; and what is the impact for gender relations and equitable benefits? The project is based in Pemba, Zanzibar where Drury O’Neill will facilitate collaboration between multiple stakeholders and support participatory workshops that will explore and develop research questions with small-scale fishing communities, the fisheries department, as well as local NGOs and academics.

The second project, which Drury O’Neill supports, is based in Kenya and Mozambique. Through community theatre, it explores the relationships, challenges, and daily practices of coastal communities, which can enhance understandings of and adaptations to climate change.

Drury O’Neill graduated with a PhD in Sustainability Science from the Stockholm Resilience Centre in November 2018. Her thesis “Catching values of small-scale fisheries: A look at markets, trade relations and fisher behavior” explored small-scale fisheries trade, markets and the accompanying relationships. It did so to understand how they contribute to human wellbeing and ecosystem health through fishers' behavior in the marine environment. Her research used a value chain framework and mixed methods, including behavioral economic experiments and various interview types. Case studies were used throughout the thesis to draw on empirical work done in Zanzibar, Tanzania and Iloilo, Philippines.

Drury O’Neill received her Honours degree in Marine Science from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Here through her thesis project she worked with ArcGIS to analyse seabird distributions across the North Sea. Following that she moved to Portugal and worked towards a Masters in Marine Biology at the University of the Algarve in Faro. During her Masters thesis she used a value chain framework to study the Ghanaian tuna industry.